‘He must be terrified of something to wire a place up like that.’
‘Losing the Duchess, I guess,’ said Matt.
They had dropped down into the port now. Lights from the boats shivered in the black water like fallen earrings; the forest of masts swayed gently against the stars. In the distance they could hear the faint splash of the sea as it rolled over and over on the white sand.
They came to an all-night café along the front. A few fishermen were drinking morosely at the bar; a tired-looking waitress had kicked off her shoes and was polishing glasses as though in her sleep.
‘What we need is immediate first aid,’ said Matt, and as he was ordering black coffee and triple brandies for them both, he suddenly turned round and smiled at her. The effect of him that close was so mind-blowing that her knees gave way. She had to fumble for a bar stool and clamber on to it.
‘Will you bother to go and see Antoine’s contact tomorrow?’ she asked, as they got their drinks.
‘If that doesn’t lead to anything, I’ll scrub the whole thing and preserve my energies for squabbling with Mrs Edgworth.’ He took her hand and she hoped he couldn’t feel the tremor that shot through her. ‘Look, angel, I’m really sorry you were frightened. When one’s had scraps with Provos, and white Rhodesians, and even Amin’s henchmen, as I have in my time, Braganzi’s hoods seem pretty small fry, but I know how terrifying it was for you.’
‘Honestly, I’m fine now.’ She could hardly tell him she’d never felt so happy in her life, and she thought he was the nicest man she’d ever met, and if he’d taken her in his arms, and thrown her down on the heath again, she wouldn’t have minded if the entire criminal world formed a shrieking witch’s coven round them. So instead she said, ‘What were Amin’s henchmen like?’
Then he told her about some of the trouble spots he’d been to and they had several more brandies by which time the stars were fading and the horizon was lightening to a pale turquoise. They walked back past the Bar de la Marine and the Plaza Hotel, with its striped umbrellas folded and its dozing doorman. They passed a few elderly homosexuals looking for comfort, and guitarists from the nightclubs sleepily twanging their way home.
‘You’re too good to be true, can’t take my eyes off you,’ hummed Matt.
At the reception area of La Reconnaissance with its one naked light bulb, he took down her key and extracted a dripping purple aster from the vase on the desk. Imogen ran upstairs pressing the lights and racing to catch the next switch before it went out and plunged them into darkness.
Outside her room, he stopped. ‘Good-night little accomplice,’ he said softly, handing her the dripping purple aster.
He’s going to kiss me, she thought in rapture. But as he bent his head and touched her lips a door flew open, and out charged a fat woman in a hair net, who barged past them and rushed down the passage to the lavatory. Next minute they heard the sound of terrible retching, and both collapsed with silent laughter.
Then suddenly another door opened and there was Cable wrapped in a dark green towel, a cigarette hanging from her scarlet lips.
‘And about bloody time too,’ she said.
Inside her room Imogen wandered around in a daze. Matt had kissed her. She knew how casual kisses could be, and they’d both been drinking all day. But she didn’t think Matt was a casual person. Port-les-Pins was teeming with beautiful girls but, unlike Nicky and James, beyond a cursory approving glance, he’d never shown much interest in any of them.
She looked in the mirror, and touched her lips where he’d kissed off all her lipstick, then ran her hands over her body with a shiver of excitement — a genius in bed Cable had said. But it wasn’t just the bed she wanted.
Wipe that silly grin off your face, she kept telling herself, you’re banking on too much. She lay down on the bed, but the room swung round and round, so she got up, and tried on all her new clothes, standing swaying on the bed to see them full length. Tomorrow she’d wear the pale green sundress, or perhaps the duck-egg blue shirt with most of the buttons undone like Cable did. She imagined Matt at this moment having a blazing row with Cable, saying it’s all over between us, I love Imogen.
You mustn’t hope, she told herself sternly, he loves Cable, he only gave you those clothes to get Nicky off her back, but the words made no sense to her.
I love him, I love him, she said, pressing her burning face in the pillow. Then she carefully put the purple aster between the pages of her diary, which wouldn’t shut now because of the yellow centre bit, and lay for a long time watching the sky lighten, listening to cocks crowing and cars starting up, and children shouting, before she fell asleep.
Chapter Twelve
She was woken by the sun on her body, the same delicious feeling of happiness spreading through her like a rosy glow. She put on the new pale blue sundress and went downstairs to find the rest of the party in various stages of disintegration, having breakfast on the front and reading the papers.
Yvonne was displaying a black and blue foot on a chair for everyone to see. Having had no dinner last night, she had insisted on James ordering a boiled egg for her.
‘This egg is as hard as a bullet, Jumbo,’ she was screeching as she tried to force a buckling toast soldier into it.
‘I asked for quatorze minutes,’ said James defensively.
‘That’s fourteen, not four,’ shrieked Yvonne. ‘Why do you drink so much when you know you can’t hold it, Jumbo? You know how idiotic it makes you next morning.’
James, desperately trying to disguise his hangover, was lifting his cup of coffee with both hands. He looked terrible. Matt didn’t look much better. He smiled rather guardedly when he saw Imogen, and didn’t quite meet her eyes as he ordered her some coffee.
Nicky, looking healthy as ever, was reading the sports page of The Times.
‘Christ,’ he said, ‘Connors got knocked out in the third round.’
Imogen watched him surreptitiously move his foot forward, and rub it gently against Cable’s ankle. Cable returned the pressure, then stretched her beautiful brown legs out in front of her. She was wearing a Jean Machine rugger shirt and sitting on one of Matt’s knees, reading the Daily Mail horoscopes.
‘I do hate not getting the horoscopes till the day after. Evidently I should have had a disastrous day for romance yesterday, which simply wasn’t true, was it, darling?’ She coiled an arm round Matt’s neck, and kissed him lingeringly.
Imogen picked pieces of skin out of her coffee with a spoon, and felt happiness slowly oozing out of her like air out of a badly tied balloon.
Madame waddled out with a telegram for Matt.
‘It’s from Larry Gilmore,’ he said, when he’d opened the orange envelope. ‘“Arriving Plaza 8 p.m.,”’ he read.
‘Oh, that’s great,’ said Cable.
‘Is that Larry Gilmore, the photographer?’ said Yvonne. ‘I thought he was supposed to be a monster.’
‘He’s fine as long as you don’t burst into tears every time he calls you a stupid cow, and Bambi, his wife, is lovely,’ answered Cable defensively.
‘Bambi and Jumbo,’ said Nicky. ‘It’s getting more like the zoo every minute.’
Everyone brightened at the prospect of new blood, it would perhaps get them off each other’s backs, except Imogen who merely expected it would mean more talk about models.